Skating away the familiar weekend split that has become all too familiar for the beginning of the season, but the UND men’s hockey team is embracing the challenges ahead.

After salvaging a split last weekend at home against Minnesota Duluth, North Dakota will travel to Boston this weekend for a non-conference series against Boston University. Though consistency may be difficult to take on, each day provides opportunities to improve.

“I say it every year — this is a new team,” UND coach Dave Hakstol said. “This happens to be a little bit of a younger team than maybe what we’ve had over the past years, but that’s no difference. It’s a new team you have to grow that consistency and your roles, and that’s what we’re going through right now.

“We’re going through those growing pains. We have some added challenges that we’ve gone through over the past weeks, and we’ll continue going through those, but that’s hockey. Everyone goes through those. Those are things that we embrace — embrace the challenge and embrace the huge challenge of going out to Boston University and Hockey East — and going out there and playing well and improving what we’ve been talking about.”

When BU traveled to Grand Forks last November, the teams split, but North Dakota leads the series with an all-time 12-8-1 record.

In his first year as head coach at Boston University, David Quinn replaced Jack Parker after Parker’s retirement of 40 years coaching the Terriers.

While Quinn is searching for his first victory over UND, the Green and White also are looking to claim their first Saturday win this season.

“They’re great trips,” Hakstol said. “We’re coming through a real challenging time in our year and we’re going into what is most likely the most challenging road trips of the year. It’s going to push us to get better.”

Elizabeth Erickson is the sports editor of The Dakota Student. She can be reached at [email protected].